“It is going to be hard for us all,” said Joron as Skearith’s Eye continued to blaze glorious colour across the horizon.
“It is,” said Meas. “So let us fly fast, let tonight’s fire and water set this weapon, for when we meet Hag’s Hunter, Twiner – and we shall – we will need to be sharp and we will need to be keen.” A smile moved across Meas’s face like a bird caught by the wind: there one moment before suddenly falling away. The expression that replaced that fleeting smile Joron could not read. Then she walked back up to the rump to take her customary place by the spine.
Joron gazed after her and he realised what her expression had been in that moment she thought of Hag’s Hunter and her sister waiting in the north.
It had been a look of satisfaction.
They called the Northstorm the warstorm because those who lived on land thought it brought nothing but anger and death. The women and men of the sea knew different. The Northstorm was like war because it was unpredictable: it could be calm for weeks on end. It would lull you into a false sense of security before loosing its fury. And like war, the storm’s fury, when unleashed, was terrible and deadly.
But, the Northstorm could be surprisingly gentle, and it was with gentle winds and shallow waves that the Northstorm flew Tide Child, Cruel Water and Snarltooth towards war, towards killing, towards wreckage and death. And whether it would be their own or another’s they did not know. But one of the Maiden’s greatest gifts, or greatest tricks, was to gift women and men the belief in the moment, of their own immortality. Without that belief then the likelihood of pain, the possibility that the next day they would sit at the Sea Hag’s bonefire, well, who would ever go to war then? But each and every deckchild had the ability and the instinct to believe, quite wholeheartedly, that the worst would not happen to them.
Or so Joron thought, and he cursed them for it. Cursed their songs which grief still left him unable to sing, cursed the jaunty way they walked the decks as if action were something to be longed for. Cursed the way they talked of how they’d “show the Gaunt Islanders a thing or two” and cursed himself for not being able to see anything but his own coming demise.
Joron had the late watch that night, wrapped in a thick stinker coat and watching Skearith’s Bones as they made their slow progression across the sky. He could find no peace. Every time he closed his eyes he heard the song of the windspire and saw the wingshot hit the tower. One moment women and men stood there, the next they were gone. Never mind that they had been the enemy. A single step forward and he would have joined those who had died at the tower. As surely as the bones in the night would change so these thoughts dogged him.
Tomorrow we will fight.
Tomorrow I may die.
Sleep had eluded him for days, but when it did come, it was not the coming action that he dreamed of, it was of being under the water, and not of drowning, not of fear. In his dreams he became something terrible, something sure of its terribleness, he had imagined that such a feeling would bring him peace but it did not because he knew this surety was misplaced. As he sheared through the water, glorying in his vast displacement, in the way that all creatures ran before him, he was haunted by the knowledge that he was not invulnerable, that there was a threat he did not know or understand but was no less real for that. And this dream, in the way of all dreams, faded into something nebulous and barely remembered by the time Joron slid from his hammock to take up his watches. All he had left of it was a creeping sense that he had missed something important but did not know what it was.
He stood on the deck of Tide Child as Skearith’s Eye rose and the black basalt of Skearith’s Spine gave up its secrets to the coming light: wheeling birds, vines and plants grimly clinging to the rock, tiny beaches where the midtide creatures came ashore to lay their eggs. While the spine revealed itself, Tide Child hid his identity. A Gaunt Islander flag flew at the topspine in its savage glory, circles of silver and black.
“You think the flag will fool them?” said Dinyl as he approached.
Joron wished he would keep his voice down a little.
“If you spoke a little louder, Dinyl, I think the whole crew would hear you questioning the shipwife’s orders.”
Dinyl scratched his head, pushing fingers up under his no-tail hat to pull them through greasy brown hair.
“I only ask a question, is all.”
“And it is a question you should not ask of Twiner.” They turned to find Meas striding up the deck. “You should ask it of me and ask it in the privacy of the great cabin.” Where Joron was tired and Dinyl looked resentful, Meas looked like she had slept the sleep of the just and been visited by the peace of the Mother. “But on this occasion it is a question I do not mind you asking and do not mind the crew hearing my answer.”
Around them heads were raised – not obviously; nobody pausing in the myriad small or large or easy or complex tasks that kept a boneship running. But heads were angled, hair was tucked behind ears, hammers were put aside for quieter tools so that the shipwife’s words could be heard.
“The flag will not fool them, not for long. Once someone who knows the ships of the Gaunt Islands well is consulted they will know they do not have a four-ribber. But they will wonder if this ship has been taken. So they will pause, they will wonder, and maybe they will let us pass through without checking or sending out a flukeboat to look at us.”
“Maybe,” said Dinyl.
“Oh, I know it is unlikely.” Meas grabbed a rope and climbed on to the rail, staring out at Skearith’s Spine and the birds wheeling and squabbling around its base. Then she turned to face the deck and raised her voice. “But it is worth a try, and the longer we have before the ships out there know of us” – she pointed through Skearith’s Spine – “the better.” She waited while her words sank in, then took a breath. “There is more I must tell you, and now is the time. I have not been truthful with you, and I must be that now. A shipwife does not have to explain herself, ever, but I choose to. I did not know all of you when I came aboard. Did not know what a fine crew you would turn out to be. Or if you would follow, if you would be loyal, if you would understand duty. But I do now. And I trust you to trust me. So stop what you do, my deckchilder, and listen.”
They did. All around work stopped. Old crew and new crew and Coughlin’s men and even those few that still followed Cwell gathered before the rail. The shipwife watched them gather, let them gabble excitedly and waited for them to settle, before she spoke again.
“Both Cruel Water and Snarltooth are Gaunt Islander ships.” A sharp intake of breath at that, but Meas carried on. “They chose to join us, to protect the wakewyrm with us. So they may be able to pass us off as their prize, but they may not.”
Cwell stepped forward, her face bent with scorn. She spat on the deck.
“You make us into traitors.”
Meas jumped down from the rail to stand in the centre of the ship’s deck.
“Have I made you into traitors?” She walked around Cwell, meeting the eyes of every woman and man but her. “Or have I made you into real deckchilder, into real crew? Into women and men with a bit of pride? Into fleet!” Her voice rose. “You saw Cruel Water,” she said to Farys. “Saw him with his gallow-bows pointed down, ready to loose on the arakeesian to keep it safe, even though they knew it was certain death for them.” She walked across to Barlay. “Those ships will fight with us because they see what we see.” She pointed to the wakewyrm. “They see the keyshan! They understand the keyshan! They know its bones bring war and killing for ever. And you” – she picked out Karring this time – “you have four children back in Bernshulme, children you see fit to kill others to protect. The Hundred Isles, the Gaunt Islands – if either takes the arakeesian, we will fight for ever.”